


Imperfect Copies

by ReneeoftheStars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Troopers - Freeform, Kamino, Kaminoans, baby Boba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReneeoftheStars/pseuds/ReneeoftheStars
Summary: Five years before the events of "Attack of the Clones", Jango Fett walks through Tipoca city, contemplating the clones that share his face.





	Imperfect Copies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr blog @celebrate-the-clone-wars writing Wednesday prompt: Copy Cat

“What do you think?”

The cloners were always asking that, every time he came around for training and inspection. He didn't know why they kept bothering to ask, since every answer he gave was shorter than the last. Besides, it didn't matter what he thought. They may have been his clones, but they were not for him. They may carry out his revenge eventually, but their purpose was not for his use.

It didn't matter what he thought.

Still...

“What do you think?”

Jango Fett thought that the brown eyes that followed him down the painfully white halls were nothing more than glassy doll eyes. The eyes reflected only what they had been shown, and carried nothing of what was inside.

Because there was nothing inside.

They all knew him. They had only to glance at him once to realize he was not one of them. Some feared him for it. Others looked up to him. He ignored the sideways looks and open stares as he strode down the corridors. Rain lashed against the shielded windows, the angry sea churning below the city.

“What do you think?”

He thought they smiled too easily when they thought no one was looking. They laughed and joked and showed more agency than the Kaminoans had initially told him they'd have. It made him feel strange; had there been a time he had actually laughed like that? The cloners had said they would be suppressing some of Fett's more violent tendencies in the copies, make them more receptive to commands. They were specifically programmed to not be as hard as him.

So perhaps he never _had_ laughed like that.

“What do you think?”

He thought their faces were all wrong. In structure, they matched his, from jaw to nose to skintone. But it wasn't his face, not anymore. Their skin was too smooth, to even, their expressions relaxed, unmarked by scars and harsh nights, unbeaten by coarse weather and desperate fists.

The faces he saw around him – by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands – were not his. They were shiny and new, and unprepared for the galaxy.

“What do you think?”

He thought they were quick learners. They'd better be, if they planned on surviving – and they _did_ have survival instincts, he found out. They took orders without questions, as the Kaminoans said they would. But they would improvise a solution during training, do something even he hadn't considered, and he would be reminded that they were not the droids he sometimes pretended they were. 

And sometimes, every now and then, he would look into a set of eyes and see a flash of something else. Not himself, never himself. But a spark of defiance, of intelligence, of... personality. Though whose personality it was, he hadn't the faintest idea.

Unless, of course, the cloners had been overconfident in their abilities, and hadn't edited out as much individuality as they thought.

The idea only vaguely irked him, that an actual _someone_ might occupy his face. But he had known what he was getting into when Tyrannus had first approached him.

“What do you think?”

As long as the clones did their job, Jango Fett didn't care.

He followed the halls of the city until he passed into an adjoining settlement, the living quarters for the Kaminoan scientists. The eyes that were not his eyes fell behind him, and he followed the curve of the dome until he came to a certain apartment. He pressed the control panel, and the door slid open.

Inside, a small boy of five years old sat cross-legged in the middle of the common room. He held Fett's helmet in his tiny hands, staring intently at the visor. Maybe studying the design, the scratches. Maybe trying to see through to the internal display. Maybe he was just staring at his own reflection.

The boy looked up as Fett entered, and a wide grin split his face.

“Dad!” he boy cried, scrambling to his feet and running towards him. Fett knelt down to embrace the boy, putting one hand on the back of his curly little head. Right now, he looked so much like the other boys at the far end of the city. But Fett knew that wouldn't be the case within a few years.

“What are you up to, Boba?” he asked.

Boba leaned back and met Fett's gaze. Fett saw so much more behind Boba's eyes than any of the others. “I wanted to try on your helmet. But I didn't think you'd want me to.”

“You are my son, Boba.” Fett would never let him forget it, never once neglect to remind him that he was worlds apart from the soldiers being bred to die. “Someday you may wear a helmet just like it. If you are to wear it, I will be with you.”

Carefully, Fett lowered the helmet over Boba's beaming face. And as he called up different displays and features and began to explain their functions, his mind wandered to the day the Kaminoans had first brought him Boba.

The scientists had looked at him strangely when he'd insisted on having an unaltered cloned infant of his own. They'd had a few mishaps with early replications while they tweaked with the genetic code: deformities, deaths, abnormalities.

But this one...

Fresh out of the incubation tanks, screaming with strong lungs and kicking with strong legs. A born fighter. The first successful reproduction. Fett had taken the boy into his arms, and when the child finally opened his eyes, Fett saw himself reflected there – but he saw so much more.

“What do you think?” the Kaminoan scientists had asked.

Fett knew his response.

“He's perfect.”

 

 


End file.
